Well, Until Christmas...

Dear Family,

I hope you enjoyed hearing the sound of my voice last week, because you won´t be hearing it for another 7 months or so. Oh well, you still have my emails to look forward to.

Yea it was cool to talk with the fam.

Crazy huh? I´ve already been out for almost 6 months (only fall short a few days). It doesn´t seem like that long. In fact, the longer I´ve been out, the shorter it seems. I really need to focus heavy on making the most of my mission or, like it says in Preach My Gospel, I´m going to get to the end of my mission and find a lot of things unfinished and a lot of unused potential. I´m doing ok right now, but I need to pick it up. I´ve started to feel the plateau coming. But that´s in part due to my office work. I think that´s one thing the Lord is really trying to teach me right now is balance in your life between work (the office), church (proselyting), and play (P-day). Right now work is kind of dominating our schedule as problems and unexpected difficulties arise. I always feel bad when we miss an appointment (or several) because of work in the office. But our work is necessary for the rest of the mission to function I guess.

As far as work, it´s good to make money. Don´t spend it all, put some aside for the rainy day. That´s a principle I´ve put into practice here in the mission. A lot of Elders will spend all of their monthly allowance every month, and a lot of missionaries have problems with money. I´ve been saving about a 10th of my allowance monthly and putting it aside for those emergency purchases. For example, one Elder got a parking ticket while he was in the office. He had to take a loan from the mission to pay it and he had a chunk of his monthly payment taken each month to pay back the loan. I lost our phone a while back and so I had to pay for a new one. Fortunately, I had money put aside and I could pay for it then and not worry about it. Also a lot of times we have to buy things for our apartments, such as gas for the stove, that we can get reimbursed for. If you have a store, you can pay for it with that and not have to worry about getting your reimbursement right away instead of having to buy it and then not eating the next week while you wait for the reimbursement. The General Authorities have counceled us to be wise with our money. That is one principle that I have seen proved many times over, especially here as Financial Secretary of the mission.

Oh yea, last Saturday we had a super baptism. We had an investigator get baptised, the Assistants had one, the Sisters had one, and another companionship in another branch had one. I should be able to attach a few pictures.

The other pictures I attached were from a health fair that we held in our building before the baptism. We had tables set up and we had a missionary couple, our missionary nurse, and some members at different tables teaching other members and nonmembers about good health practices, how to deal with certain sicknesses such as fever or diarrea, and basic first aid. Elder Shelhamer and I had a table about the Word of Wisdom. Oh yea. Spreading the good word.

Transfers are next week. We still don´t know what´s going to happen, but it´s almost certain that Elder Balls, the General Secretary, will leave the office because he´s been here 4 transfers. His companion, Elder Coleman, will then train the next Elder. As for me and my house, who knows. Technically, my companion is trained so it´s possible that I could leave as well, but at the same time, i could end up staying another transfer.

Goodness gracious the mission field is awesome. I have learned so much. I actually have a greater desire to do things better. At college I would clean because we had cleaning checks and sometimes just because it was really really messy. Here, I clean because it´s just a better environment and I like having a clean apartment. (We´re supposed to have cleaning checks too, but for some reason we haven´t. Hmm... but i´m confident that if we ever did, we´d pass with flying colors.) Also with exercising, a lot of Elders will slack on exercises, but I find that when I exercise I feel better throughout the day and the week. There have been a few days that I´ve missed exercising due to office work that we had to do in the morning and I have felt the lack. I feel it when I´m doing good and when I´m doing the right things, and I feel it when I´m not. I think that´s a good sign that I´m a lot more spiritually sensitive than I´ve been before.

Ok well, I´m out of time. Thanks to all of you who wrote me. Guilt trip to all of you who didn´t.

Love you,

~Elder Peterson